Kelly Slater: I don't think the ESPN Tour is completely a dead idea.
28 February, 2010 - It seems clear the rumours of the 'Rebels Tour's death are greatly exaggerated. Kelly Slater insists it's no rebel tour, and that if he had his way, the stalled ESPN-sanctioned tour would run as a best-of-the-best format to co-exist with the current ASP tour.
'I don't think that the ESPN Tour is completely a dead idea. I think there's some kind of possibility that it could still happen in the future. It doesn't have to be a rival or alternative tour to the ASP, it might be a supplementary thing. 'The last thing I want to see is the companies or the ASP be screwed over. But I also don't want to see the surfers screwed over. A supplementary series could work out great.
It doesn't need to decide the world champion. I think people were confused about whether that needed to be like boxing with different belts. Slater came under intense scrutiny last year after he and ESPN mooted the idea of a secondary tour, one which would feature just 16 athletes and unprecedented prizemoney, plus mainstream media coverage of a sport with a business model that has gone largely unchanged for two decades.
Unlike other international sports such as tennis and golf, surfing's major companies not only sponsor the bulk of the tour's athletes but are also the principle sponsors of the events - granting them almost total control of the sport. The ceiling on athletes' earnings was - and still is to some extent - of great frustration to Slater.
''It served a purpose at one time, the three marques running the sport, because we wouldn't have a tour if it weren't for those guys - Billabong, Rip Curl and Quiksilver stepping to actually create it,'' Slater said. ''But in saying that, where the sport is now, it's an incestuous relationship, to be honest. The same people paying for the tour are the guys controlling it and not maybe letting it change and allowing it to advance into the 21st century.
''But I don't want to get into that debate again this year. It definitely distracted me and made me a bit angry last year. I've had these talks with Quiksilver and some of the guys there agree with me and some of them disagree. That's just life, that's how business is and it's not personal. It's not directed personally at any one.
''My whole hope is to move the sport forward.' While Slater is happy with progress and praised the ASP for listening to the surfers, the 38-year-old tour veteran of 20 years says there's ample room for further improvements - not to the ASP tour, but to the sport itself.
''But ASP and sponsors would have to allow a supplementary tour to happen and or all the surfers would have to say, 'That's what we want'. And either of those ways, it could happen,'' Slater said.
Slater outlined how the system could work. ''Someone like Jamie O'Brien is never going to be a world champion, but he's the best guy at Pipeline and he will prove that over and over again,'' he says. ''He's won more different events at Pipe than anybody. He's won five times at Pipe in three different events. But he's not going to beat the top 10 at Trestles probably, so it'd be more like a horses for courses kind of thing.
''You've got Manoa Drollet, who's one of the best guys at Teahupoo, but he's probably going to get smoked at Brazil on a beach break. Laird Hamilton will smoke all of us at Jaws, but I guarantee he's not going to beat me at Huntington. So why not show all the best surfers of the best waves in the world?''
Slater admits it's going to take a team effort to forge the right path. ''I'm just talking off the top of my head here, but maybe we have the 10 best guys who have proven it over and over again in all conditions against the best, say, six to 10 guys at each spot,'' he said.
''Then you bring a guy like Danny Fuller in to Teahupoo and most guys don't know who he is, but he's a Pipe and Teahupoo great barrel rider. Horses for courses. Then you go to a beach break and Mitch Coleborn, Ry Craike and Dion Agius get a chance to go.
''And maybe, hell, if you win an event and you're not on tour, you get a spot on the ASP tour the next year. There are all these great surfers who aren't on the tour, free surfing, but there's no reason you can't create a format that encompasses all those guys once in a while. I still think another series would be good. Surfers need to keep their options open, to create the best product that they can.''
''My whole hope is to move the sport forward and potentially allow 20 guys at any given time to retire from surfing instead of like five guys or three guys. Surfers don't make a great load of money. There's probably not one surfer in the world who is going to retire in the next 20 years who people will be saying is filthy rich. It's just not going to happen. Obviously for surfing, some of us make good money, but in terms of sportsmen no one is rich. A golfer makes $900,000 in four days - that's more than half my career winnings.''
Read the full article by Josh Rakic
Photo Courtesy : QUIKSILVER
